Nov 29, 2007
Briefing Book
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Taking the land by storm water
If you like Lewisboro’s wetlands law, you are going to love Lewisboro’s storm water management law.
If you sleep soundly at night knowing that our town government protects puddles of water, you will sleep even better knowing that our government will soon start protecting potential puddles. But if you’re a Lewisboro homeowner, you’re going to lie awake wondering how quickly the next rainstorm will bring a flood of government bureaucrats onto your property.
Are you thinking about cutting down that old tree in the back yard? Maybe you’re heading out to buy some sand and gravel and get that driveway patched? How about spreading some topsoil around the family garden? Try doing any of that without reading the storm water management law and checking with the town government and you risk $1,000 a week in fines and six months in jail.
What exactly is Lewisboro’s proposed storm water management law and how will it affect homeowners? New York state wants town governments to adopt a storm water management law regulating “land development activity,” which, according to the bureaucrats, contributes to storm water runoff and wreaks all kinds of ecological havoc. Our town government’s proposed storm water law reaches well beyond town roads and construction sites onto every front lawn in Lewisboro, bringing every Lewisboro homeowner’s “land development activity” under the jurisdiction of the town government.
The proposed storm water law defines “land development activity” as “any activity that requires review, approval and/or permitting” under the town’s land use laws, including any activity involving “fill, wetlands, sand and gravel, and tree removal ... regardless of the size in area of activity” (emphasis added). Goodbye homeowner rights, hello puddle protection!
Even a homeowner’s routine maintenance activities, such as those mentioned above, would be subject to regulation, since the storm water law says the town government decides what’s “routine.” The law exempts any “routine maintenance activity covering less than five acres,” but whether you get the exemption is determined “in consultation with the storm water management officer.”
So you’d better hope that dead tree doesn’t fall on the kiddies while you’re off at the Town House trying to navigate Lewisboro’s “user-friendly regulatory process.” And if you and the town government should disagree over whether your home activities are exempt, guess who wins that argument?
And that family garden? First of all, here at Briefing Book, we believe a land use law is burdensome and overly broad when the drafters have to stop in mid-sentence and write an exemption for family gardens. In order to be exempt from regulation, that garden has to be “primarily” for your family’s use. Will homeowners have to start counting how many homegrown tomatoes they use to make salad and how many they give to their neighbors? What if you give the salad to your neighbor? Does that count?
The town government will rationalize this overreaching law with its usual clichés: “We have no choice!”; “Trust us, we’ll be reasonable!”; “We just want to work with you!” But to make sure they can get your attention, the law expands the town government’s power to issue stop work orders. The town government may, without showing any proof at all to a court of law, issue a stop work order against any “land development activity” on your property that is subject to the storm water law — which would now be just about every activity.
If you’re a homeowner, especially one who wants to fix or expand a home, complying with the storm water management law will be expensive. You have to submit a “storm water prevention plan” prepared by an army of “experts” paid for by you. While you’re writing checks, you can also pay these experts to decipher Lewisboro’s new “Storm Water Prevention Plan Review Procedure.” You can expect to pay thousands of dollars more in fees — either for storm water prevention plans or to fight the town government in court. And the town government can enter your property at any “reasonable” time just to check things out — you don’t even have to be home.
The storm water management law reflects the government’s strategy for solving environmental problems — make homeowners pay to fix them. By adopting a law that applies to virtually all homeowners — a law that, like the wetlands law, arms the government with the power to threaten homeowners with ruinous fines — the government shifts the costs of environmental protection from the government to individual homeowners.
The town government says we’re all downstream from someone. But with the storm water management law, the town government will be upstream, raining on all of us.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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